This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021 (up to September). Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs. 350 Animals with intake subtype of Community Cat Diversion were removed from the stray and RTH calculations. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTH outcomes out of all strays.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are slightly lower than the national and HASS averages, which are at 30% RTH rate (for dogs) and about the same as the RTH rate for cats (3%), but there is a clear increase trend from 2019 to 2021 (for dogs).

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1329 21 0.02
Cat 2020 1063 18 0.02
Cat 2021 952 17 0.02
Dog 2019 1350 190 0.14
Dog 2020 1127 176 0.16
Dog 2021 1658 404 0.24

Field RTH Rate

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field, which is anything that has an intake subtype containing ‘ACO’. Normally, we would then split these by RTH method between RTO in the field and in the shelter, but here we will just look at the RTH rate as a whole for animals that were not dropped off by the public.

It seems like these values were only put in use recently, and the rate for them is higher than the yearly average.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2021 176 4 0.02
Dog 2021 935 277 0.30

Shelter RTH Rate

This shows the numbers only for public drop offs. We excluded the subtype ‘Community Cat Diversion’, since they are not expected to be RTH, but kept the subtype Litter No Stray Hold which we were not sure how to interpret. We can see that the rates for these have been slowly increasing, but not as high as those for ACO drop offs.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1329 21 0.02
Cat 2020 1063 18 0.02
Cat 2021 776 13 0.02
Dog 2019 1350 190 0.14
Dog 2020 1127 176 0.16
Dog 2021 723 127 0.18

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Knowing that a few L&F programs and practices were updated in Mid 2020, it is interesting to see the trajectory. May to Nov 2020 seem slightly better than previous months, then there is a big drop around the turn of the year, and a sharp increase after March 2021, stablizing around over 25% RTH rate since.

Overall RTH

Field RTH (Dogs)

This is the same figure, but only counting field strays (again, anything marked as something other than public drop off). May 2021 was a peak month, and the rate since are consistent and higher than those for public drop offs.

Shelter RTH

This figure only counts strays who did not come from the field. Despite the zig-zags there is a slow increase, and the rates are lower than those from the ‘field’ (the other figure).

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

It seems like there have been more strays coming in since June 2021, which makes the higher rates since even more encouraging! Does that seem like the right numbers to you?

Stray Intake Subtypes

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 10 days for dogs and 29 for cats. That means that every successful RTH saves 10 days of care on average (for dogs) at GCAC.

We can make a cost savings calculation using these LOS numbers, the number of RTHs, and a daily cost of care if that is of interest.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 2710 31.86
Cat RTO 56 2.16
Dog Other Outcomes 2286 12.78
Dog RTO 770 2.14

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found ZIP

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by ZIP codes to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per ZIP code.

Note: Found addresses were available for 2019-2020 data, so for these, animals with a found address of the shelter (Furman Hall, GCAC, Abandonded at Shelter) were removed - 230 in total.

Stray Intake

RTH Rate

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists. As the RTH rate is uniformly high across the city, the areas with more stray intakes stand out.

Data Notes

  1. Zip codes - 1058 of the 7488 stray animals did not have a ZIP code listed. 857 of these had ‘Greenville County Unincorporated’ as the value. Only 11 had no value.

  2. Found locations were listed for 11091/13449 of all animals in 2019-2020. For strays, 230 of 3886 available addresses were that of the shelter (which makes sense for animals left at the shelter), which is a reasonable percentage. However, the most common addresses include only a street name, without a number or an intersection, which would make it difficult to pinpoint if we wanted to make the maps above more granular (eg by Census tract) and find distanaces traveled by stray - RTOs. Main examples: Poinsett Hwy, White Horse Rd, Tugaloo Rd. s

  3. Intake Subtype - Clarification needed for ’Litter No Stray Hold (692 values). Also, there are multiple values with fairly little usage, as you saw in the figure above.

  4. Outcome Subtype for RTH - it is worth clarifying the difference between Stray Reclaim and Return to Home/Owner, which are the most frequently used. Also, there are seized reclaim and surrender reclaim values used for animals marked as stray intakes - see table below.

Outcome_Subtype N
Stray Reclaim 402
Returned to Home/Owner 361
Seized Reclaim 53
Surrender RTO 9
TNR- Return to Field 1

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Exact distances traveled by lost dogs from home, if home address is collected for successful RTH.
  2. Prevalence of microchips across town (for example, are there areas from which more animals come in without chips?) and the RTH rates for animals found with/without chips, if there is a field indicating microchip scan results upon intake.
  3. Reclaim fees (could be a yes/no to track fee waiving).
  4. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if this data is accessible to the shelter).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.